According to TTC boss Andy Byford, Torontonians are wimps who are afraid of technology. The fine CEO of the city’s transit system didn’t say it so bluntly, but how else would you interpret the following, reported by the Star’s Tess Kalinowski:

“It would be a real leap of faith for Torontonians to even countenance having a train that didn’t have a driver. I don’t think, politically or societally, it would be tenable. I just don’t think there is an appetite for that,” Byford said.

Byford is right about many things; he’s wrong about this, of course. And such backward thinking is costing us hundreds of millions of dollars on a transit system that needs hundreds of millions of dollars.

Torontonians daily ride trains that operate without drivers all over the world. Why not at home?

Numerous people movers across North American airports go driverless. Trains travel above ground in Vancouver, below ground in London, above and below in Paris and Barcelona — through fire and flood, valleys and mountains — on new lines and retrofitted ones, in unionized environments and in dictatorial jurisdictions, without drivers. Unattended Train Operation (UTO), they are called.

Here, we run the same Vancouver SkyTrain technology on the Scarborough RT, but we employ a well-paid, redundant driver while Vancouver uses a computer.

At the time the TTC introduced the Scarborough RT in 1985, they said people wouldn’t accept riding a train with no one at the controls. That was nearly 30 years ago.

Today, automatic trains are the way of the future.

The TTC is spending oodles of money modernizing its signal systems. The improvements on the Yonge-Spadina line will allow for driverless trains by 2018. But, just as in1985, the TTC refuses to push forward.

Instead of going all-in and moving toward autopilot for the Yonge-Spadina line, Byford is reduced to selling the idea of using just one, not two operators, after the signalling upgrade. That’s madness. What’s needed is a serious examination of how to go totally driverless and to do the consideration by engaging the public, not assuming that they live in the past century.

Yes, there is the matter of cost of retrofitting stations; and the matter of the union and the current 612 subway operators and guards. Address it, fix it; others have.

A recent study from the Neptis Foundation, a Toronto think tank, underscores how limited thinking is costing the TTC with this specific issue of modernizing its technology:

“Newly constructed lines in Paris, Vancouver, Dubai, New York, Copenhagen, Taipei, and other cities are completely driverless but with “roving attendants,” who assist passengers, check tickets and help with crowd management. Some but not all UTO lines have “platform screen doors” (PSDs) that provide another level of safety and reduce delays from trespass and suicides.

“Now driverless operation is being introduced on existing, older lines. Paris has recently upgraded its Line 1, which runs under the Louvre and Arc de Triomphe, for UTO. Platform Screen Doors were retrofitted, at night, over several years, and a new control system was installed. This is Paris’s busiest and oldest ‘Metro’ line,” says the report.

As Byford has been telling his workers, the computer control is accurate, allows for greater capacity; and the bonus is reduced costs that come from fewer operators. In Paris, a heavily unionized system, this was achieved without strikes.

Actually, what the TTC needs here is a push from city hall, where transit costs come to roost.

Wanted: Bold candidate for Mayor of Toronto. Willing to tackle tough issues like the Gardiner Expressway, driverless subways and the island airport, without resorting to slogans and tactics that divide residents.

Must be expedient, but not rash or rigid. Drive change and consensus while embracing innovation and hard choices.

Toronto is big enough and bright enough to produce several such candidates. It’s what the city deserves as it settles into the 21st century. If Toronto is to step into the realm of alpha city, the platform for such an ascension must be set by 2020 — six years hence, when the new century will already be 20 per cent over.

For about five decades we’ve settled for middle-of-the-road mediocrity. We are mesmerized by the median, stuck a few notches below great.

The next mayor should be someone who is bothered by that — and is compelled to change course.

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